FPGAs allow circuit designers to prototype relatively complex designs before finalizing the design. Compared to application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), FPGAs provide designers the flexibility of revising or refining their designs in their laboratories without having a full-blown fabrication of each iteration or revision to the design. Because of their flexibility and programmability, however, typical FPGAs may not contain enough hardware resources to implement or emulate relatively complex designs.
TM-FPGAs seek to re-use the FPGA's hardware. Thus, they provide the designer with apparent increased hardware resources (in exchange for slower operating speed). As a result, designers may implement larger designs than ordinary FPGAs would allow. To use conventional TM-FPGAs advantageously, however, designers should have knowledge of the time-multiplexed nature of the FPGA. Thus, the user has involvement in the process of implementing the design in the TM-FPGAs and often has to make decisions about various aspects of that process. A need therefore exists for TM-FPGAs that allow implementation of a user's design without the user's extensive involvement in that process.